After five days, I have all the main gameplay elements implemented.
I'm very happy to have reached this stage two days before the end of the event. This leaves some time to refine the game. However, I don't know how much more work I'll be able to put into it due to the family bonds the day after tomorrow.
On the other hand, however, there are still a lot of things to do to make this game completely complete. At this point it is missing a start screen, a game over screen, some sort of in-game goal or at least a list of high scores. A tutorial would be useful, too.
Some thoughts after 5 days:
1. I had forgotten how much fun it is to participate in 7DRL. Great experience, and I mean both this minimarathon of design and programming and the social aspects.
2. In many ways, I'm happy with my game. I've wanted to do a hybrid of roguelike and interactive fiction for years, but always focused on something else. Now I have a reasonable completed game, all thanks to 7DRL.
3. I've been fortunate that I haven't encountered any long-term blockers. In fact, I had a significant problem on Sunday, but it didn't stop me for _too_ long. Other than that, rather smooth sailing. The menus system is rather fragile but fortunately nothing sprinkled in the course.
4 That said, I am not happy with the direction gameplay has taken over these 5 days. The game is definitely less roguelike than it was intended to be!
5. I think the recipe for a good 7DRL is to design one main mechanic in a very good way, and build the rest of the game around that mechanic. I adopted a similar premise this year, and made dice rolls the main mechanic. It worked out well...
6. ...well, partially well. Throwing dice and using consumable super dice, while a nice gimmick, is not an interesting enough mechanic to serve as a single focal point of the entire game – which is what it was intended to do. This could be a very cool basis for a game that relies more on a lot of content. But it's 7DRL, no time to create tens of dozens of random events.
Obligatory screenshot:
I made a pre-release (as every other day), but now all elements that make this game, well, a game, are present. Except win / lose conditions. If you want to give it a try, you might download archive from there: https://github.com/VedVid/7drl-2025/releases/tag/day-5
Yup, I still didn't set up a game page. A couple of notes
There are three types of rooms: merchant, random event, combat event.
Every interaction within combat event ends with rolling a dice. Size of the base dice pool is always equal to the player attribute related to the action. Relevant attributes are always highlighted. You can also always add a consumable dice to the dice pool.
To do so, you need to use right arrow key when you have an action highlighted, use up and down arrows and enter key to mark dice you want to add to the dice pool, go back to the menu on the left side by pressing left arrow or escape key, and proceed with pressing enter key. Please note that changing action resets markers on the dice in the inventory.
The attached archive contains both linux and windows builds.
For linux, you can either start game by running start_linux_full file that uses included in the archive Love2D AppImage, or by running start_linux_small that will try to use system-wide Love installation.
To start game on Windows, simply run start_windows file.